This is a pretty good book on Cantor and the issues around infinity. http://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Aleph...=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238621366&sr=1-3
I agree. I liked that book quite a bit. My ex was into Jewish mysticism [it's another story, but before meeting her I believed all things were explained by science. She was the first evidence I had that there are non "physical" things in this world], she suggested I go to a talk on the connections between Grand Unified Field theories and Jewish mysticism at a local synagogue. I was astonished by some of the parallels and it was really interesting.
Best elementary introduction to modern Cosmology, imo: Before The Beginning: Our Universe And Others (Helix Books) (Paperback) by Martin Rees (Author) http://www.amazon.com/Before-Beginning-Universe-Others-Helix/dp/0738200336/ref=pd_sim_b_1 I strongly recommend every book by Martin Rees. For example: Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe (Paperback) http://www.amazon.com/Just-Six-Numbers-Forces-Universe/dp/0465036732/ref=pd_sim_b_7
http://www.ctraces.com/Circuit_Traces/CT1_4/physics.html "The Physics of Immortality" is over 10 years old by now but the subject matter would be hard to outdate to say the least. If you like your pop science taken to extremes then you can't get any more extreme than the lengths Mr Tipler goes to prove his theory. How about colonizing the entire universe or emulating every personality type and by extension human being thats ever lived via a computing power thats compounded Moores Law to hundreds of decimal places. Professor Tipler is professor of mathmetical physics at Tulane University so if you'd like to refute him you'd better have your propeller hat turbocharged because his theories are scientifically supported to the extent that the book contains an appendix for scientists. Again if you like your science theory taken to extremes this read is like a 10 year old having DisneyWorld all to himself.
I was going to wait to get this book on a kindle, but I decided the heck with it since I want the color version and I am not waiting until 2010. Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion (Kindle Edition) by Stuart Kauffman (Author) http://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-S...=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242566199&sr=8-2 I enjoy most of Kauffman's books. Imo this is his best.
your wasting your time. you can't know intimate cosmology by reading popular science off amazon anymore than you could understand trading by reading a book. focus your time on that little specialized niche that you know you are really good at you are a trader not a cosmologist. stop wasting time
I just finished reading: A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Godel and Einstein by Palle Yourgrau (Author) http://www.amazon.com/World-Without...=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244584456&sr=8-2 Wonderful book that is a lighter version of a similar book by the same philosophy professor.
One of the best things anyone ever said was Feynman's quote of, "time is natures way of keeping everything from happening all at once." When you shrug off all the conventions by which human sensibility measures time, from clocks to the machinations of our solar system and allow the concept to gell in your mind you get closer to how the universe thinks. Somewhere in there is the key to unlocking eternity its said the soul persists in ...thing is, if I can't get a fat charred, medium well ribyeye with portabello some bloomin onions and a Killians in that eternity its sort of useless to ME ....ahh money.
I remember the quote, but I don't remember who said it. I am actually surprised that Feynman said that. One of the consequences of Special Relativity (SR) is that there is no such thing as "now." We all have our own "now" time lines. Hence simultaneity doesn't exist. There is no such thing as "at once." Perhaps he meant the time that is left when you normalize this time out, what is called cosmic time. In SR, time is another coordinate like space, except that it's geometry is very different than the geometry of the "physical" dimensions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_time Think about it for a second, if there is no such thing as and absolute "now", how can we say that the universe is 15 billion years old? In what frame or reference? This is called cosmic time. Well, I am not sure I follow. Time is definitely something that we think we understand, but is much deeper than we think. For example. in Godel's solution to Einstein's Field Equations of General Relativity, time does not even exist. Physicists can't really explain time. Nothing in physics requires it, with the exception of the neutral kaon in weak interactions, and even that is somewhat contrived.